LITERARY ENDEAVOUR.
A recent writer remarks that ‘the practice of letters is miserably harassing to the mind. To find the right word is so doubtful a success, and lies so near to failure, that there is no satisfaction in a year of it.’ A cynical warning, indeed; but there is, we think, no danger of a scarcity of literary effort in the immediate future, whatever the appreciable results of it may be. There will always be a host of aspirants for literary honours, and the reason of this may perhaps lie, to a certain extent, in that very uncertainty which attends the pursuit of letters as an avocation; the brilliant rewards which have been earned and the underlying risk of failure, present together the very conditions of enterprise most powerfully attractive to many minds. For it must be remembered that there is no fixedness in the canon either of public opinion or of criticism in literature; that which fails to win attention to-day, may attract to-morrow; and success, especially that form of it which results from passing popularity, is in many cases very much dependent on the proverbial fickleness of the reading public. It would be difficult, we think, on other grounds than that of this attractiveness of the chances and prizes of the literary occupation, to account for the active competition which is so observable in the profession. That the pure literary faculty, as a stimulus, does not form a distinguishing characteristic of all aspirants, is plain enough. No doubt, a great impetus has been given to literary endeavour by the periodical press, which, by popularising ephemeral literature among the masses, and by its own requirements of supply, has thus increased its production. And the same is true of the newspaper press also, with its opportunities for the contribution of correspondence, which, though frequently a humble enough opening for talent, has often sufficed to originate and foster the habit of more ambitious composition.
The canon of literary criticism is, we have said, not an unvarying one. But undoubtedly there is, for all perfect, and still more for all enduring work in the world of letters a certain measure and standard of excellence in the mode of expression, which even the most brilliant genius cannot afford wholly to disregard, but which is as incapable of exact definition as it is difficult of attainment. It is much more, certainly, than ‘the finding of the right word,’ even granting that the right idea be behind it. A literary composition may be characterised by the most perfect accuracy of expression, may be faultless in every detail, and yet be after all a very mediocre piece of work at the best, though it may be difficult exactly to indicate in what respect it is defective. We can only in a case of this kind point to acknowledged merit as possessing what the attempt in question lacks.
It has also to be noted that excellence in literary workmanship is properly independent both of the nature of its subject and the scale on which it is executed. An instance of this may be found in Thackeray’s Roundabout Papers. In these apparently careless sketches, a designedly trivial subject is chosen; the treatment of it is everything, and the artistic finish is of the highest; the subject is dwarfed in the handling, and yet the very handling interests the reader abnormally in the subject. Perhaps, however, this subordination of the subject to the treatment—as in the inimitable narrative of the schoolboy purchasing, from his companion, the pencil-case with the movable calendar atop—is as a whole inferior to that method by which the incidents of the subject are brought out in relief, as it were, by the simplicity of the description, so much so, that the art of that simplicity is concealed. Nathaniel Hawthorne in his House of the Seven Gables and several of the Twice-told Tales has some exquisitely pellucid specimens of this complete literary facility. In such masterpieces we see the results only, without any indication of the labour involved in its execution. The statue is there in all its finished loveliness, but the chips of the marble have been swept away. ‘How clear and flowing your melody is,’ was once remarked to an eminent musical composer; ‘how easily you must write!’ ‘Ah!’ replied he, ‘you little know with what hard work that ease you speak of has been purchased.’ When the late Charles Mathews was playing in Melbourne, fifteen years ago, he received what he considered the highest compliment of his professional career. A little girl in the audience was asked by her friends at the conclusion of the performance how she was pleased, to which she replied: ‘I didn’t care for Mr Mathews’ acting a bit; he just walked up and down the stage as papa walks up and down the dining-room at home.’ It is the fact of this appearance of perfect spontaneity in the highest art, being really the outcome of the most assiduous care, that renders it so truly inimitable, and the counterfeit so easy of detection. The ‘round O of Giotto’ was only a perfect circle, but it needed the master-hand to execute it with a simple sweep of the crayon. Ruskin tells us in one of his treatises on Landscape Painting, that in some of the greatest works of genius, an effect which is almost magical at the proper focal distance, is conveyed by what appears, to the uninstructed eye and viewed close at hand, to be a mere dash of loaded colour, but which in reality could not be added to or diminished by the smallest particle without detracting from the effect.
If it be true that literary excellence is only to be attained by the patient bestowal of ‘infinite pains,’ that there is no easy method of reaching it, it is no less the fact that, as a general rule, the time is wasted—perhaps worse than wasted—which is devoted by the young writer to a laborious imitation of the style of any distinguished author. Such an imitation is generally an unsuccessful one, and results in a reproduction of the faults and defects of the original without its graces. The advice Dr Johnson gave to those ‘desirous of attaining the English style,’ to ‘give their days and nights to the volumes of Addison,’ must be taken with reserve. Such a style, though eminently beautiful in itself, would practically nowadays be out of date, even if faithfully reproduced, while at the same time it is most likely that the student would overlook that deficiency of force with which the manner of Addison is fairly chargeable. The best model for style is not that of any particular or favourite writer, but rather the excellency of the best writers generally—the highest qualities of the highest types.
We have hitherto spoken of that perfect mastery of our language in writing which has been the possession of those famous in the history of English letters, and it may be inquired if such a high standard should in all cases be necessarily aimed at, seeing that for many purposes of everyday life a lesser degree of cultivation might be found as practically useful. To this it is sufficient to reply that much positive good must result from an endeavour to follow the best examples in the practice of any art, and further, that such an endeavour will be found the surest way by which to avoid all faulty and careless work, which can under no possible conditions be praiseworthy or even tolerable. No young writer can afford to write carelessly, till such time, at all events, as he has become fully versed in his art, when he will probably find that to write with the effect of carelessness is beyond his power. At the same time, young writers should be careful not to adopt for imitation a style of too great elevation, for by so doing they may find that they have contracted that worst of all literary diseases—bombast.
In estimating the amount of labour bestowed on the production of literary work, care must be taken to include the original mental processes involved in the conception of the ideas, as well as the subsequent elaboration of them in detail; the higher sort of composition includes both; and it is evident that when the question comes to be one of the labour of origination, we find ourselves in a region where estimate is all but impossible. ‘The workshop of the imagination’ will reveal no record of its toil. Edgar Allan Poe, indeed, in his Philosophy of Composition introduces us to what he would have us believe to be the very beginnings of invention, endeavouring to portray the very earliest growth of his marvellous constructive faculty exemplified in his poem of The Raven. But his explanation reads more like an intellectual pastime than a reality, even if it were beyond question that the central idea of the poem was original, and not borrowed from an eastern source. In the case of Auguste Comte, however, we have an instance of the amount of intellectual travail which may often precede the birth of a great work, the mental preparation before the committal of the thoughts to paper. To quote M. Littré’s account of Comte’s method: ‘Here is the way in which he composed each of the six volumes of the Positive philosophy. He thought the subject over without writing a word; from the whole he passed to the secondary groups, from the secondary groups to the details. Then, when this elaboration, first total, then partial, was completed, he said that his volume was done.’
IN ALL SHADES.
CHAPTER VI.
The three weeks’ difference in practical time between England and the West Indies, due to the mail, made the day that Edward and Marian spent at Southampton exactly coincide with the one when Mr Dupuy and his nephew Tom went up to view old Mr Hawthorn’s cattle at Agualta Estate, Trinidad. On that very same evening, while Nora and Harry were walking together among the fields behind the battery, Mr Tom Dupuy was strolling leisurely by himself in the cool dusk, four thousand miles away, on one of the innumerable shady bridle-paths that thread the endless tangled hills above Pimento Valley.